Inequality of Opportunities for Children in Ethiopia and Contributors for Inequality

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to measure inequality of opportunities for children in Ethiopia. The study used secondary data from Living Standard Measurement Survey of Ethiopia, 2015. A total of 7207 sample children were considered. Human opportunity index was used to measure inequalities of opportunities for children. Dissimilarity index was used to measure inequality of opportunities. Opportunities were peroxied by access to basic services such as primary education, safe drinking water, health and nutrition. The dissimilarity index showed high inequality with value of 20.8, 12.9 and 8.4% for access to safe drinking water, health service and minimum nutrition opportunities, respectively. The coverage rates of access to opportunities were also less than other regions with respective values of 64.1, 29.8 and 22.9% for primary education, safe drinking water and health services. The human opportunity indices were also 61.5, 23.6 and 20.0% for these opportunities, respectively. Access to safe drinking water and health services were the lowest available opportunities as well as the highest inequitably distributed among children in Somali and Afar regional sates than other regions. This indicates that these regions allocate low resources to increase average access rate of these opportunities. Moreover, the existing services are distributed unfairly. These urge the government to create fair level playing field for children across the country. Increasing allocation of resources to improve the coverage rate of safe drinking water, health and education services in pastoral areas reduces in equality of opportunities among the regions.